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"If you have a gut response to a story, you are not responding to something new ..you are really responding to a story you were told when you were six or seven…"
- Samuel R. Delany
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| Belter | ||
| A person who was born and raised in the asteroid belt around Sol. |
As far as I know, Niven coined this handy term. However, the idea of having a word for the people who colonize and work among the asteroids is older (see below).
| Every compartment in the personnel ring opened into the narrow doughnut-shaped hall which ran around the ring's forward rim. Steve pushed himself into the hall, jockeyed to contact the floor, and pushed. From there it was easy going. The floor curved up to meet him, and he proceeded down the hall like a swimming frog. Of the twelve men and women on the Angels's Pencil, Steve was the best at this; for Steve was a Belter, and the others were all flatlands, Earthborn. |
| Technovelgy from The Warriors,
by Larry Niven. Published by Worlds of If in 1966 Additional resources -
|
Here's another insight offered into Belter behavior:
"Sometimes it's almost eerie. You don't move for minutes at a time."
Compare to asterite from Collission Orbit (1942) by Jack Williamson.
"You noticed a habit of mine once. I never make gestures. All Belters have that trait. It's because on a small mining ship you could hit something waving your arms around. Something like the airlock button."
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
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'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
